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Episode 13: Bridget Whearty on “Digital Codicology”

September 4, 2023 in Interviews, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Episodes for The Research Group Speaks, Research Group Speaks (The Series), Uncategorized

The Research Group Speaks
Episode 13

Decretum Gratiani plus sleeved Manicule, via gallica.bnf.fr from Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen. Ancien fonds, Ms E 1a, folio 195v.

Saturday 21 September 2023 online
12:00–1:30 pm EDT (GMT-4) by Zoom

“Making Digital Codicology:
Research and Writing in Community”

Bridget Whearty

[Posted on 4 September 2023, with updates]

We invite you to attend Episode 13 in our series.

The Research Group Speaks

The Eventbrite Portal for this Series:

The Research Group Speaks

To register for This Episode:

Episode 13. Bridget Whearty

Bridget Whearty: Faculty Profile via https://www.binghamton.edu/english/faculty/profile.html?id=bwhearty.

Episode 13 showcases the work of Bridget Whearty, Associate Professor of English, General Literature and Rhetoric at Binghamton University, State University of New York (see her Curriculum Vitae). She will speak informally about her work and research interests, focusing upon her recent book on Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor (Stanford University Press, 2022). About the work, see, for example, her observations for the Coding Codices Podcast.

We learned about her work toward the book in an earlier stage, well before it appeared in print, in 2018, when we met as audience members at the 11th Annual Symposium of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. It was inspiring to hear her then, and to have the opportunity to meet and talk more — as it happened, walking to the conference and in the parking lot as we were both preparing to leave. I found this meeting wonderfully memorable. Our subjects of discussion then included not only books, but also cats and cooking.

Fast forward. As the RGME began its series of online Episodes in 2021, and their momentum came into place across the series, which now reaches Number 13, the suggestion that we invite Bridget came naturally. Responding to the suggestion, I made the invitation, Bridget generously responded, we explored what she might like to focus on — and so, now, we welcome her gladly to our series.

We look forward to hearing more about Bridget’s quest, along with its challenges, discoveries, and recognition of the people behind the books in whichever ways they become known to us — by presenting themselves, in one and/or other ways, materially or by representatives, including digitally.

Come to think of it, that meeting of the people in (or of) the books is what we try to do with medieval and other books, only without being able to meet them in person . . .

Now is our chance with Bridget, and, through her, others who work behind the scenes in the study and presentation of books for our inspection, study, instruction, reflection, and questions.

You can register for this event by our RGME Eventbrite Collection. To register for Bridget’s Episode 13, visit this portal. Information below.

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Tags: Anonymous Hands, Anonymous Labor, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 12476, Digital Codicology, Digital Codicology The Book, digitization of manuscripts, Digitizers' Hands, Henry Noel Humphreys' Specimens of Illuminated Manuscripts, Johanna Green, Le Champion des Dames, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Research and Community, Stanford University Libraries MSS Codex MO379CB, The Research Group Speaks
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“Imaging Aids in the British Library” (December 1993)

September 5, 2016 in Seminars on Manuscript Evidence

A Visit
to the British Library
by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

15 December 1993

In preparation for the Workshop
on Image-Processing and Manuscript Studies”
at the Parker Library on 15 January 1994

in the Series of
Research Group Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

[First published on our website on 5 September 2016]

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Claudius A III, folio 8r. Frontispiece with Gregory the Great enthroned in a niche and reverent monks at his feet. Reproduced by permission

A 1-day visit to the British Library in December 1993 prepared for the Research Group’s January 1994 workshop on optical imaging techniques as aids for manuscript studies.

Organised by Mildred Budny and Tony Parker and held at the Parker Library, that approaching workshop on Image-Processing for Manuscript Studies” aimed to consider developments in imaging through photographic and computerised methods, as a means of gathering information and feedback about techniques of image processing, both existing and planned, with a view toward applications, capabilities, limitations, desiderata, and future potential.

Participants at the workshop would include experts in manuscript studies, conservation, photography, imaging aids, computing, radio astronomy, engineering, forensics and medical imaging. The speakers would come from the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, the University of Cambridge, the British Library, the University of Kentucky, the Questioned Documents Section of the Metropolitan Police Forensics Laboratory, Ipswich Hospital, and Keith & Pelling Ltd. The other participants would come from both near and far.

Meanwhile, there were elements of information to gather and materials to prepare.

Fact-Finding, Demonstrations, and Explorations

Postcard with frontal view of The British Museum.

Viewing the Front of The British Museum via Postcard.

The Visit took place in the Manuscripts Conservation Studio of the Collection and Preservation Directorate of The British Library. At the time, remember, The British Library (created on 1 July 1972 as a result of the British Library Act 1973) still remained in its “old” building, before the move in 1999 to the new building, specially built for the purpose, on the Euston Road, Number 96. That is, the British Library remained in the same building as The British Museum, out of which it had emerged as an entity of its own. The Department of Western Manuscripts remained in its domicile, in the East Wing of the building (designed in Greek Revival Style by Sir Robert Smirke and completed in 1852), facing Great Russell Street and the Front Entrance. The Manuscripts Conservation Studio occupied quarters in the Basement below.

During the years of her long-term research on manuscripts at The British Library for the Ph.D. (London 1984), Mildred Budny (a founder member and by now Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence) had been a frequent visitor to the Manuscripts Conservation Studio, at Tony Parker’s invitation, to learn about new equipment, new techniques, and new discoveries as part of the conservation work on many forms of materials, manuscript and other. As a result both of such visits and meetings elsewhere, conferences included, it was “natural” to learn, for example, about the Beowulf Digitisation Project (1992–) already as it was beginning to take shape and form.

Here, thanks to that Project (and other developments), you may see, right now, here and now, how the sole surviving medieval copy (partly burnt) of Beowulf begins:

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 132r. Reproduced by permission.

On the day, we could inspect the Real Thing, viewed with the relevant equipment, and guided by a founder of the Beowulf Digitisation Project in a formative period. At the January Workshop on “Image-Processing for Manuscript Studies”, Kevin Kiernan also joined the presentations, although that time not in the presence of the manuscript itself, but represented by proxy, and moreover by computer transmission of images via the University of Kentucky to Cambridge. (You may take such representation for granted, nowadays, but we report an earlier stage in the worldwide transformation of the transmission of images of manuscripts, etc . . . )

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 140r. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 163v. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 139r. Reproduced by permission.

*****

Report of the Visit, Now with Illustrations

‘Imaging Aids’ on 15 December 1993. Photography © Mildred Budny.

A report of this December Visit appears as an Appendix to the “Preliminary Report” of the 15 January Workshop, printed and circulated as a Booklet after its event. A similar Report for the December Visit to the British Library appears in the Fifth, and Final, Annual Report to the Leverhulme Trust (1993–4) on the 5-year Research Project at The Parker Library on “The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts” (Leverhulme Trust ref. F665). On the series of Annual Reports, see our Publications.

We now transcribe the Report here, for you to see both on our website and in our Research Group font Bembino — our own copyright font, designed over more recent years by one of the participants of this Visit. (You may download this font for FREE here.) You may also view the Appendix on its original page in the downloadable Booklet. Here, we add some links and, by permission from The British Library, several images from the relevant manuscripts examined during the Visit.

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Tags: Bembino Digital Font, Beowulf Digitisation Project, Beowulf Manuscript, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius A III, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv, digitization of manuscripts, Gregory the Great, Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Imaging Aids, Manuscript Conservation Studio, Saint Dunstan, Saint Dunstan's 'Classbook', Seminars on Manuscript Evidence
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2013 Symposium on “Identity & Authenticity”

January 1, 2014 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Conference Announcement, Events, Exhibition

Identity & Authenticity

Creating, Recreating, Transmitting & Preserving Identities Across Time & Place

We held a Symposium at Princeton University on 22 & 23 March 2013 with the theme of “Identity & Authenticity: Creating, Recreating, Transmitting & Preserving Identities Across Time & Place”. Here we publish the Symposium Posters, Program, and Abstracts of the Papers, with thanks to all our Sponsors, Contributors, and Participants.

Symposium

Friday & Saturday 22 & 23 March 2013
McCormick 106, Princeton University

Poster 1

Poster 2

The challenges of shaping, reshaping, maintaining, conveying, and validating identity, both personal and collective, are perennial human concerns. Our symposium explored subjects, regions, and materials from the early medieval period to the present day. Presentations considered, for example, Western European and Syriac manuscript discoveries, Byzantine liturgical textiles, medieval seal-matrices and “forgeries,” Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic magical recipes from the Cairo Genizah, the transmission of Islamic paper, the reliquary of John the Baptist owned by the Knights of Malta and the Tzars, the medieval-style Hammond Castle in Massachusetts, the challenges and opportunities of collecting medieval manuscripts nowadays, and digitization projects dedicated to manuscripts and archives for teaching and research.

Sponsors:

James Marrow and Emily Rose

John H. Rassweiler

Index of Christian Art

Barbara A. Shailor

The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

De Brailles Medieval Art (LLC)

Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity, Princeton University

We also thank the Department of Art & Archaeology of Princeton University for the rooms, media services, and facilities for the event.

Speakers and Moderators:

James Marrow at the "Identity & Authenticity" Symposium (2013), with photography by James Heidere

Having a Look

Opening Remarks

James H. Marrow (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University)

Session 1. Investigating the Archives: Detecting Spheres of Influence

Moderator: Celia Chazelle (Department of History, The College of New Jersey)

Alan M. Stahl (Firestone Library, Princeton University), “The Virgin in the Garden: The Making of a Pilgrimage Site in Medieval Venice”

Eleanor A. Congdon (Department of History, Youngstown State University), “Who was Antonio Contarini? Solving the Prosopographical Riddle of a Venetian Merchant in the Datini Archives”

Ortal-Paz Saar (School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study / Tel Aviv University), “A Genizah Magical Fragment and Its European Parallels”

[Note: Now published as “A Genizah Magical Fragment and Its European Parallels”, Journal of Jewish Studies, 65:2 (2014), 237–262, described here]

Session 2. Imaging or Imagining Identity: Recreating a Medieval Legacy

Moderator: Colum Hourihane (Index of Christian Art, Princeton University)

Karl F. Morrison (Department of History, Rutgers University), “Assimilating the Libri Carolini in the Seventeenth Century”

John H. Rassweiler (The Rassweiler Collection, Princeton), “Some Experiences with the Validation of Medieval Seal-Matrices of the Common People”

Martha E. Easton (Department of Communication and the Arts, Seton Hall University), “Authenticity, Anachronism, and the Experience of the Past at Hammond Castle”

Session 3. Shaping and Preserving Identity in the Syriac Church

Moderator: Kathleen E. McVey (Department of History, Princeton Theological Seminary)

Philip Michael Forness (Department of History, Princeton Theological Seminary), “The Identities of a Saint: An Initial Inquiry into the Manuscript Tradition of the Homilies by Jacob of Sarug”

Jack B. Tannous (Department of History, Princeton University), “Syril of Scythopolis in Syriac: Observations on a Manuscript from the Sinai New Finds”

George Kiraz (Editor in Chief, Gorgias Press / Department of Middle Eastern and South-East Asian Languages & Literature, Rutgers University), “The Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal Archive of Mardin: Digitization and Challenges”

Session 4. Creating Digitally-Enabled Manuscript Resources for Research & Teaching

Moderator: James H. Marrow (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University)

Thomas A. Carlson (Department of History, Princeton University / Beth Marduthuo Research Library, Piscataway), “Identity and Identification in the Digital Humanities: The Challenges and Experience of Syriaca.org”

Barbara A. Shailor (Department of Classics, Yale University), “A Mellon Foundation Project at Yale University: The World of Digitally-Enabled Scholarship for Research and Teaching”

Session 5. Discovering, Recovering, and Evaluating the Source Materials

Moderator: Colum Hourihane

David W. Sorenson (Quincy, Massachusetts), “Recent Studies in Islamic Paper and What They Can Tell Us About Texts (and Images)”

Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence), “A New Fragment of the Vitas Patrum from the Covers of an Early Printed Postille: An Early Case of Western Paper?”

Scott Gwara (Department of English, University of South Carolina – Columbia / King Alfred’s Notebook, LLC & De Brailes Medieval Art LLC), “Medieval Manuscripts in the Strangest Places”

Rossitza and Ida at the Day 1 Reception of the 2013 Symposium, with photography by James Heidere

Enjoying the Company

Session 6. Establishing or Re-Establishing Identities in the Byzantine World and Beyond

Moderator: Mildred Budny

Henry D. Schilb (Index of Christian Art, Princeton University), “Serbian and Christian Identity in the Embroideries of the Nun Jefimija”

Rossitza B. Schroeder (Visiting Fellow in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University / Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California), “The New Chosen People: The Old Testament in Late Byzantium”

Ida Sinkevič (Department of Art, Lafayette College), “The Afterlife of the Rhodes Hand of St. John the Baptist”

[Note: This has been published here]

Demonstration: Demonstrating Original Sources and Database Resources

Displays by:

Demonstration Session on 23 Mar 2013 at the "Identity & Authenticity" Symposium, with manuscripts on the table

Examining the Originals

Scott Gwara (De Brailes Medieval Art LLC)
David Sorenson (Specimens of Islamic Paper)
Eleanor Congdon (Specimens from the Datini Archive)
Thomas A. Carlson (The Syriac Reference Portal)

*****

The Symposium Booklet, edited by Mildred Budny and laid out in RGME Bembino, contains the
2013 Symposium Program & Abstracts of the Papers.

[The version uploaded on 29 September 2014 corrects a couple of typographical mistakes in the version circulated at the event.]

*****

Circulated online before the Symposium, the Program and Poster 2 are also available here on the online Calendar of the Program in Medieval Studies of Princeton University:

Medieval Studies Calendar Archive Princeton University

[Formerly here: “http://web.princeton.edu/sites/medieval/images/RGME%20Symposium%20Program.pdf”]

RGME Symposium Poster

*****

Photographs by James Heidere

*****

Tags: Antonio Contarini, Cairo Genizah, Church of San Cristoforo in Venice, Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity, cult of images, Datini Archives, De Brailles Medieval Art (LLC), Department of Art & Archaeology, digitally-enabled scholarship, digitization of manuscripts, Domenico Calvaca, embroideries of Jefimija, Hammond Castle, history of Islamic paper, History of Paper Manufacture, history of textiles, Index of Christian Art, Jacob of Sarug, late Byzantine monumental Old Testament cycles, Libri Carolini, magical recipes, medieval manuscripts in North America, medieval seal-matrices, medieval-style architecture, Mellon Foundation project, Patriarchal Archive in Mardin, Postille printed in Lyons 1527, Princeton University, Rassweiler Collection, Rhodes Hand of John the Baptist, seventeenth-century religious polemics, Sinai Syriac New Finds, Syriac Christianity, Syriac manuscript studies, Syriac Reference Portal, Syriac studies, Syriaca.org, Syril of Scythopolis, The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Transmission of the Vitas Patrum, Virgin in the Garden, Vita Sanctae Marinae, Yale University
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Episode 13: Bridget Whearty on “Digital Codicology”

The Research Group Speaks
Episode 13

Saturday 21 September 2023 online
12:00–1:30 pm EDT (GMT-4) by Zoom

“Making Digital Codicology:
Research and Writing in Community”

Bridget Whearty

“Imaging Aids in the British Library” (December 1993)